Bay Riffin

So we would lose our only ruck who can play the second ruck/forward role to get in a bloke who is playing less senior footy than James Sellar, is too small for ruck and must have serious questions marks on him. if we did this i would seriously question the mental health of our recruitment staff. This bloke is just not worthbending over backwards for. Martin is clearly a better 2nd ruck, and we have quite a few talls ahead of him at present at BOTH ends of the ground. He won't get a game ahead of Dawes, Clark, Frawley, Watts or even Tom McDonald. get him as back up? sure fine, why not !! but pick 49 is all he is worth.

I'm not so sure about. Blease was still get low possession games at Melbourne towards the end and would have been just hanging in there. Gysberts gets more of the ball and is more inside. They both still have poor tanks but lets see what another per season can do. Gysberts has still shown more at afl level than blease IMO.

Exactly. How many of the swans players had express speed ? Very few. Seasoned bodies, tough tackling footballers with an appetite for the contest. Something to keep in mind when supporters won't consider a kid like wines with pick 4.

Guys in a year where he and cloke were average, they still made the top 4. He helped provide some structure and does a lot of 1 per enters. He is not anything great but does require some attention. He like tippett get underrated but you notice it when they are not there. I am seeing a common theme from neeld for big bodies and he fits the bill. Don't rate blokes on just skills or even talent I reckon. Cook has much better kicking then Dawes and probably better hands but it means squat if they cant create contests or get out positioned too easily. Watts has twice the talent but Dawes has provided more for his team with great intensity, sheparding, buffeting for cloke etc. team player but huge bloke and gives 100%. That's beats most of our list and pick 20 seems fair. I would have loved another strike at a midfielder but we have a unique opportunity here. We can almost get hogan Dawes Viney pick 4 in say wines and an nt kid that has recruiters drooling. That's pretty unique.

I watched I a couple of games very seceptically but liked what I saw. He is a big unit now and really surprised me with his acceleration and good kicking. I thought not bad for a bloke coming back from injury and was kicking goals. I wouldn't mind taking the punt. His best is clearly better than Dawes but injuries make him a risk. If we threw our 4th or 5th pick at him I wouldnt mind. Essendon of course will ask the earth for him.

defintely try Jetta in the back pocket. has bit of mongrel and good tackler. Dunn has had to too many chances and failed IMO.

mate, if i live in a different culture and find its important to say 'thank you' even though I normally wouldn't, it's simple. I would say thank you if I was truelly thankful. Melbourne would have poured over a million of our members dollars into this bloke. He indeed should be saying thank you in big letters and publicly through his manager. He would not be selling books off the shelves without the Dees existence either. We have a culture too you know.

To be fair Fitzy has shown utter committment to become a consistently good VFL player by the end of the year and deserved a token game, but his kicking is ordinary. both goals were from the goal square. I was never a fan but now he has filled out quite a bit much like Spencer suddenly put on size a couple of years ago and he is quite quick. I would be happy for him to either be rookied or given some more contract time to develop. but if his kicking does not improve he will be a liability. blokes like Clark, Sheahan, Cook even Sellar are far better kicks.

Seen plenty now to agree that the closest comparison is Bryce Gibbs. He looks every bit as skilled and every bit as soft. Unfortunately its such a shame to waste a pick 1 on a bloke I am now convinced we cannot base a team around, that won't provide the structure a Clark does. He will be more that useful off half back and could have a few years like a Brendan Goddard, but like Goddard when the chips are down he isn't the go to man. Unfortunately we have to reload, we need perhaps one more big tall and about 3 top midfielders.

Don't worry about height I would love a Marc Murphy, Brent Harvey, Sam Mitchell type who are clearance specialists with their lack of height being a KEY factor.

Never seen a more cut and dry case of when a player should retire. Now is the time. He is barely surviving and 5 goals against Gold coast is a nice suprise for him. Don't care what people think about needing experience. McDonald could still have an impact, but Brad is just a good VFL player these days. Do the right thing and just hang up the boots in a few weeks. A few goals against some 19 year olds is no indication he is 'back'.

Paul Gardner, you will not be forgiven quickly for this. when will the key figures in our history start putting Melbourne first. I think what Paul did was disgraceful. After years of sugar coating our financial position which put us back further, he now after that fact, drops a media bomb. Working Pro-bono for 7 years Paul? - can you imagine our hard earned dollars we put in to this club being used pay for this sort of treament?

Gardner coming out with further tanking talk is a disgrace. He will not be forgiven for kicking us in the guts. This was the bloke in charge of our club that Jimmy alluded to not being open and honest about our financial plight, so Jimmy let the world know our problem so we could go solve our debt crisis. Very angry at Gardner who should be ashamed of himself. Just cannot believe all the blokes who made a livelihood at the Dees coming out and sh1tting all over us. They should be ashamed of themselves.

I did see that and thought it was interesting. Absolutely gave it to them after an insipid first quarter and would not tolerate it. I was interested to see how they responded? After that the bombers produced further insipid, soft pee hearted football and got absolutely smashed. Like Melbourne they won some contested footy and clearances and lost everywhere else. It is very hard to turn this around with a spray. Give this coaching group some time. My pass mark for Neeld at the start of the year was not to get smashed in the second half of the year i.e avoid those 15 goal hidings. That was where we were at as a football club. And with a second rate side with NO stars whatsoever, he is actually acheiving that. This year was all about getting a hard mentality right. it could be al ot better but it could be worse.

Sums it up perfectly. Zeibell could have avoided doing what was a dog act and running through a player who had no protection. These rule are in our game to stop snipers doing Byron Picket type acts out there. Zeibell is a prime candidate and we can see a trend happening here. The AFL have every right to protect the player with the ball. What Zeibell did was not tough. he just lined up a player who had no chance to defend himself.

fair enough. What I meant was stop recruiting weeds. Happy to recruit a young player who will fill out (ones we drafter last year fit the bill here) but will spew if we get another Morton, Watts, Cook type. We also have Jurrah who once again is skinny and gets injured too easily. Martin sounds good but come to the crunch AFL midfielders will brush him aside. Would not waste a high draft pick on him.

isn't Jack Martin a skinny skinny outside midfielder? Why is he a pick 1. I would much rather a Hogan type. If we get yet another skinny as a rake first round pick (Cook, Morton, Watts) I will give up. Look at Pies, Geelong for clues on how to win a premiership. they have very few skinny types and are usually the last ones picked anyway.

recruitment of players who have strong bodies. not just to win contested footy, but so they don't get injured as often. given last years draft was influenced by Neeld, i am positive that this will happen.

was thinking the same question myself. would love to get some more insight our our first rounder from a couple of years ago.

Here's another stat - roughly speaking in each game i have looked at the top 10 possesion getters and we rarely getting even a few in thee. for a stretch we didn't get anyone in the top 7 possesion getters on the ground, worse being Hawthorn I think who had all top 10. Now against Sydney we had 5 top 10 possesion getters no the ground, 3 in the top 5 from memory. YET we lost by 100. I heard we also won the contested possesions. How can this possibly be ?

This actually would not surprise me. I have a theory we and any team who are losing, run a lot more on most occasions because we HAVE to. I liken it to a tennis match where the superior player will make his opponent run further, not only more likely to lose the point, but expending more and more energy along the way. The perfect example is Hawthorn. They so often kick to a target who then turns around, and like flicking a switch, can pin point a target 30 to 50 metres away, and only off 2 or 3 steps. Meanwhile their opponents run 20-30 steps to cover the next player, and on and on it goes. My Hypothesis would be that winning teams often run less, but look to be running in front for more of the match. What they do is get the ball to travel at higher speeds and longer distances. In the modern game speed of foot is good but its speed of ball use that wins premierships. I think Carlton are the fastest team but over the last few years Geelong, a slower side in running but not in ball movement bring home the bacon.

Really like Taggerts game, kicked a couple of nice goals, one from a good old fashioned turnover, anticipating a kick out from the opposition. His kicking looks very good to me and has a tough look about him. A few more games like that and he will get promoted no doubt. Thought Jurrah was excellent in the first half, Watts played well in general play all day, and Davis whilst I though was average early got better and better and looks like a stronger body for us at half back. Also thought Cook as disapponting, hardly sighted, and Sheahan whilst clever and a lovely kick could have done a bit more. Another one who looks to have improved and I hope he gets better is Lawrence. He does have good pace.

An alarming stat for us when I remember Barrassi's taunt of a young Gerard Healy v Swans when was it 1983 ?? regarding a quote of " you give me possesions" The reason I bring this up is each game so far has revealed an alarming trend of the opposition dominating the top 10 posessions getters. so much in fact I realised we are lucky to occupy 1 maybe 2 of the top 10 possesion getters each game. This has been consistent since round 1. My question is, how the f$ck can we win with this stat? Anyway, I thought we could improve tonight but loh and behold Hawthorn had the top 11, yes I1 [censored] you not 11 out of the top 11 possesion getters on the ground before our first Jones with 21 possessions. I am beginning to wonder what the f$ck is going on??!?!?! Of course uncontested possesions is the key here for those who watch these games, but geez, that is truelly depressing. I don't know what to say.

I really feel it was a mistake for watts to lose weight when he should be gaining a few KGs each year. Even if he is in the midfield, in the AFL there are plenty of strong heavy midfielders like Pendlebury who would out bustle Watts too easily. We have made him into a fitter footballer doing more kms but he has lost confidence in his physical ability in the clinches.

"Slowly, Bailey was building the required defensive strengths." Any supporter could see we were getting much worse defensively and had no guts when the chips were down. Just wrong, wrong and wrong.